German reprisal against Soviet spies on the eastern front. The placard
reads: “They were activists of the
Bolshevik [communist] sabotage and spy organization.” [Private Collection]

This undergraduate History
seminar is restricted to a maximum of 19 History majors. All students are
required to have successful completed both HIST2301 and HIST2302 as a
prerequisite to entering this course. This limited course enrolment is designed
to enhance the mentoring component in the course, and to facilitate
teacher-student interaction throughout the semester.

Covert operations played a central role in the
tactics of winners and losers in World War II. Espionage and sabotage
operations dominate the narratives of the war on every front in every theater
of operations. From code-breaking in Ultra and Magic to counter-intelligence in
Operation Double-Cross, from deception at Normandy and Kursk to guerrilla
warfare in the enemy's rear areas in Europe, Africa, and Asia, covert
operations became a vital part of that war within the war. Drawing from film
and fiction, supplemented by a wide variety of published and unpublished
primary and secondary readings, we will investigate several case studies of
covert operations in World War II. Emphasis is on interdisciplinary projects
and presentations conducted on your own or in teams. There are no
prerequisites.

Each student
will be expected to write and substantially revise at least once a 15-20 page
study on a theme to be agreed upon with the instructor, based on 3-5 books of
outside materials or their equivalent. I expect all papers to represent your
best work: all papers should conform to the History Style Guide,
and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical
errors. Sloppy work will receive at least one full grade reduction. This
paper will consist either of a survey of historiography on a particular theme,
or a research paper on some aspect of espionage in the Second World War,
1935-1948. Themes are open, though all paper topics must be approved by the
instructor. A list of sample themes and a bibliography of potential readings is
available below.

Final grades
will be calculated with attention to the following formula:

• Active and
considered class participation is encouraged: 10 percent

• Your
presentations should be informative, concise, and to the point: 30 percent

All written work in this course must be the
student's own original work. Plagiarism--”the unauthorized use or close
imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation
of them as one's own original work”--is a serious violation. Please note that
the same shortcuts that make plagiarism so easy in our day also facilitate the
instructor's verification of each student's work. In this course, all
student work is checked closely for plagiarism. Northeastern University
relies on Turnitin technology: “Every paper submitted
is returned in the form of a customized Originality Report. Results are based
on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current
and archived instances of the internet, millions of student papers previously
submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of
journal articles and periodicals.” The point? If you misuse materials and
submit other people's work as your own, you will be caught. Any student
caught plagiarizing will automatically FAIL this course, and you will be
formally charged for violation of university guidelines on academic honesty.

Students are encouraged to order low-cost used
versions of these books on line before the semester starts. In addition,
students are expected to read and study short handouts to be distributed in
class. All handouts and notes for most lectures and/or discussions will be
available for review on the course WEB
page. The WEB page also
includes references and links to relevant materials that may assist students
writing papers. Books marked with an asterisk(*) above are also available in
on-line full-text versions, with links below. All links are to PDF files in
Adobe Acrobat format (these require a free reader, available here).

(2) Brock Millman,
“Toward War
with Russia: British Naval and Air Planning for Conflict in the Near East,
1939–40,” Journal of Contemporary History 29(2) (April 1994): 261–83.
[Operation Pike; France 1940]

(3) Talbot Imlay, “Mind the Gap:
The Perception and Reality of Communist Sabotage of French War Production
during the Phoney War 1939-1940,” Past &
Present, No. 189 (Nov., 2005), pp. 179-224.

SEE FILM: Eye of the
Needle (1981)
Based on a novel by Ken Follett, this is a very effective portrayal of the
daunting task of fighting German spies in Great Britain during the war. Operation
Fortitude was the massive counter-intelligence operation undertaken by the
Allies during World War II. The goal of the operation was to divert German
military troops from Normandy, the site of Operation Overlord, the Allied
invasion of France. If the German OKW (High Command, OberkommandoderWehrmacht) were
convinced that the invasion was to come at Calais, those resources would not be
able to reach the battlefield, blocked by the Seine river.

To that end,
the Allies created the fictitious First United States Army Group (FUSAG),
positioned in southern England, near the Pas de Calais. FUSAG looked like a
massive concentration of troops—at least, from an aerial photograph. At ground
level, FUSAG could be made for what it really was: a charade. The allies in
this way wanted to move the German attention towards the fictitious
battleground rather than on their actual military base.

In the film, German spy Henry Faber discovers the truth
of the British-American deception and races to inform Berlin.

An
inflatable Sherman tank, part of the strategic deception in Operation Overlord

Optional Film: The
Man Who Never Was (1956)Clifton Webb stars in this fascinating account of a daring intelligence
operation designed to mislead the Nazis prior to the 1943 Allied invasion of
Sicily. In an effort to convince the Germans to redeploy their defenses, Lt.
Commander Montagu (Webb) creates a false English officer and fabricates letters
that indicate the British intend to land in Greece. Montagu than plants these
documents on a dead man and orchestrates the “discovery” of this “officer” on
the coast of Spain, Knowing the papers will fall into German hands. What
follows is a taut cat-and mouse game as British Intelligence waits for Berlin
to respond, then races to stay one step ahead of the Nazi agent dispatched to
determine if the dead man is genuine. This true story of ingenious deception is
a riveting tale of wartime espionage.

Related Materials

(1)Ewan Montagu, The Man Who Never Was: World War II’s Boldest Counter-Intelligence
Operation (1953).

(2) Stephen Budiansky,
Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2000).

Wednesday,
14 November. Covert Operations in the Pacific Theater

READ: James R. Ward, “The Activities of
Detachment 101 of the OSS,” in George C. Chalou,
ed., The Secrets War: The Office of
Strategic Services in World War II(Washington,
DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), 318-327.

Related Materials

(1) Larry
Alexander, Shadows in the Jungle: The
Alamo Scouts Behind Japanese Lines in World War II (New York: NAL Calibre, 2009).